


Closure

by mcmissiles



Series: TES Minifics [6]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 12:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmissiles/pseuds/mcmissiles
Summary: The Nerevarine faces down her fated enemy, and everything she'd forgotten comes flooding back.





	Closure

Llarala stepped into the dim light where the tall, spindly monster of a man stood, eyes burning behind his golden mask.

“Welcome, Nerevar,” he said. His deep voice echoed against the stone walls, with that too-familiar tone she’d grown accustomed to hearing in her dreams. She looked up into his face, met his eyes.

_Voryn._

Everything shifted into place—that familiarity, the strange flutter of emotion she’d felt during her dreams, behind the dread and confusion, foreign and yet, in some alien sliver of her soul, achingly known.

_Oh, stars, Voryn._

She’d loved him. Or he had, the ancient soul who now resided in her, though at times she was uncertain of the difference.

He waited patiently, and she knew he must be aware of what she was feeling. Hoping, maybe, that it would stay her hand and lead her to join him once more. For a moment, the idea seemed inviting, before she remembered her task and felt her soul begin to tear. Her breath hitched—she leaned forward and her shoulders shook and she thought she would cry, but even as emotion threatened to overtake her she felt her resolve, hot and bright and clear, filling her head and her heart and her lungs, burning in her limbs and her throat. She choked back her tears and looked up once again at the awful, twisted version of one she could nearly remember having loved. When her voice emerged, it was barely audible yet harsh as agony.

“Voryn, I’m so sorry.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, one last time, standing over Voryn Dagoth’s corpse just as she remembered having done so long ago.

_But it’s different now. It’s done. It’s over. I’ve given him peace—a real end, closure to his thousands of years suffering in his own madness. It’s over._

She wasn’t sure she believed herself. She wasn’t sure it made a difference.

Her head was cold. Her hand unclenched and her blade clattered to the floor. Her resolve gone, she felt herself begin to cry. Her cruel, choking sobs echoed in the empty chamber and did not fade—she fell to her knees and clawed at the ground, bits of stone breaking off under her nails. She ground her teeth together, squeezed her eyes shut.

Under the mountain, in the suffocating silence, Nerevar screamed.


End file.
